From the Deep of the Dark (47 page)

Whether through good timing or having to slowly navigate their way against the current of nightsoil and effluence, by the time Charlotte, the commodore and Maeva dislodged the sewer port into the gill-neck’s capital, the city’s defence – and their diversion – was already well under way. Charlotte’s suit carried the distant sounds of the underwater battle, amplified and tinny to her ears. She hardly noticed the clash, last out of the claustrophobic tunnel, the commodore and Maeva helping her out into a tight space between two buildings.

Lishtiken, remote and hidden from all surface dwellers’ sight, was even more imposing close up. It seized the light of its own lamps and hurled the illumination across the cityscape, dancing and reflecting from a thousand crystal surfaces, mirrored and distorted by the planes and waters. Only the constant movement of swimmers and their submersible vehicles anchored the vista as real, rather than a hall of mirrors glimpsed through the prism of a glass of water. The scale of the city and the way its illumination twisted and shimmered around Charlotte was enough to make her feel dizzy. Many of the crystal surfaces were transparent, exposing chambers inside – a few filled with liquid, others airtight, betraying the gill-necks’ origins as an amphibious offshoot of the race of man. At close quarters she could observe the organic nature of the vast steepling constructions running together like a cliff line, crystalline buildings branching out to search for the surface’s scant light. On the outskirts of the city low flashes of light bounced around Lishtiken’s margins, rotor-spears exploding and the distant magnesium flashes of shock-spears discharging bolts of wild energy. How many nomads were losing their lives out there, buying them the time to carry out her plan? When Charlotte looked closer, the flow of traffic between the buildings was bustling with a single purpose now – getting to cover. She touched the reassuring heft of the shock-spear holstered like a splint against her calf. They had decided not to enter the city with the man-high rotor-spears … waving one of the ranged weapons would have been akin to unfurling a nomad standard in the centre of Lishtiken.

‘The Advocacy is not used to this,’ said the commodore in a coughing chortle of mischief. ‘They’ve had mastery of the mortal deeps for so long they’ve forgotten what it’s like to have their noses tweaked. I have the feeling they don’t much care for it.’

‘Lishtiken has never been attacked,’ said Maeva. ‘Not in my memory. The Temple of Judgements is over there. If we meet anyone who questions our presence, tell them we’re with your sister’s people. You can still pretend to be a royalist can’t you, Jared?’

‘I’ve spent most my life pretending not to be one; the reverse won’t be any harder.’

Charlotte slipped into her old familiar routine. Just another theft from the rich and powerful. Something she needed to do. Not to alleviate her poverty this time; an extra layer to the blanket of wealth she used to keep the desolation at bay, all her fears of being abandoned with no one willing to help her. Her commission was stealing one of the enemy’s darkships. A way to transport her into the monsters’ lair. She could hardly enjoy her life if every iota of her blood was sucked out to satisfy some horde of fish-scaled monsters, could she? The sea-bishops had immense power. They were greedy beyond avarice, and like so many back home, they had tried to use Charlotte, then discard her. Arrogant. Selfish. Calculating. They were overdue for a fall and who better to humble them than Charlotte Shades, Mistress of Mesmerism?

The raiding party kept to the lower levels of the city, as Maeva led them through the shadows of the gem-like towers, a maze of pipes and gantries, exotically coloured seaweed clinging to any stretch of seabed not built over. At one point, the nomad woman led them on a diversion to skirt an access station for the transport tubes sending gill-necks to far-off sectors of the city. The way ahead was thronged with locals trying to get into the heavily overcrowded transport system; to travel home and check their families were safe from the raiders. Squadrons of armed and armoured gill-necks manoeuvred past, soldiers riding something Charlotte hadn’t seen before. Massive squid-like creatures, rubbery flesh saddled with a single rider above stabilising fins; flashes of sinuous skin and quivering tentacles as the squadron propelled past.

‘Monitors, lass,’ said the commodore, keeping low on the seabed next to Charlotte as he watched them flash down the gap between the towers. ‘Same as our Kingdom constabulary.’

‘They are stabled at the Temple of Judgements,’ said Maeva, sounding pleased. ‘Fewer of them for us to bluff our way past.’

Shaped like a crown rising majestically out of the surrounding buildings, the Temple of Judgements reached up as grand as any palace. Charlotte ran her eyes over the fortress-sized structure as she squeezed out of a narrow passage. Dozen of crystalline towers climbed out of a central wheel structure, points on its coronet circled by spirals of pearl-white bubble-buildings, each wreath set among a helix of winding arches.

‘Can you still feel the darkships inside there?’ asked the commodore. There was a tone to the old u-boat man’s voice that made Charlotte suspect he would have been relieved if she said no.

Charlotte pointed to the side of the Temple of Judgements, near the seabed where the red crystal wall sloped dotted with tunnel entrances. ‘They are inside those passages.’

‘U-boat pens,’ said Maeva. ‘They’ll be mostly empty by now. Anything with torpedo tubes will be out chasing our warriors.’

‘They won’t have sent the darkships, not yet,’ said Charlotte. That wasn’t the sea-bishop way. They might send their forces to tip the balance, but why risk their precious lives when they commanded so many expendable cattle to exhaust first? ‘I can sense at least two vessels inside.’

Elizica was worryingly silent on the matter.
Yes, because I’m doing such a good job by myself.

Charlotte gazed up at the waters above the city. Was it her imagination, or were the flashes of fighting at the margins of the capital growing less frequent now? Savages against the well-defended heart of the Advocacy’s hegemony, how long had she expected the nomads’ war party to be able to mount a diversion? Charlotte singled out an entrance down which she sensed the darkships lurking and they quickly crossed the open plaza to the temple.

Inside the tunnel entrance, the water was dark and still. They only took a minute to swim along the smooth crystal surfaces. As the light inside the submersible pen began to brighten the water, Charlotte realized the sloping tunnel floor was clear of liquid before them. ‘There’s air ahead of us.’

‘Always better to do repairs on your blessed boat out of the sea when you can,’ said the commodore. ‘Welding is welding.’

‘The oxygen will be enough to keep the casually inclined away from their pens,’ said Maeva. ‘Our ride is topside?’

‘Let’s see.’

Breaking the surface of the tunnel alongside her two companions, Charlotte found herself in an oblong chamber, a crystalline ramp with multiple launch rails running across its floor. A couple of open-to-water gill-neck craft hung from gantries above, and at the back of the pen, a pair of black oily-hulled darkships skulked. Two massive malevolent stingrays – they appeared to be steaming in the air, as if their presence was enough to make the very substance of the world crawl. Arches at the rear of the chamber led deeper into the Temple of Judgement, sealed with glass doors – but of crew, engineers and temple staff there was no sign. The three of them walked cautiously up the incline, pushing the visors of their diving helmets up into their helms. Disconnecting the voice line that tethered the three of them together, they pulled out shock spears and crept up alongside the launch rails, dripping water down onto the hangar floor.

‘Why do I feel like a mouse, lass?’ whispered the commodore. ‘Creeping up on a piece of cheese dangling from a bait clasp?’

Charlotte craned her neck, looking for any signs of movement in the dock. ‘That’s the point of the assault. Any sea-bishops masquerading as Advocacy commanders inside the temple will be overwhelmed by officials pestering them for orders on how to defend the city.’

Charlotte approached the alien black mass of the ships. It was as if the substance that formed them was alive, throbbing with dark intent.

‘How many can one of these evil boats carry?’ asked the commodore.

‘Two pilots. Up to ten passengers,’ said Charlotte.
At least, that’s how Elizica remembers it.
‘Enough to hold the three of us.’

The commodore appeared as though he’d been hoping for a smaller capacity – perhaps one less than his number. ‘Two craft to choose from, but we need to name them for luck. The one on the left we’ll call the
Revenue Man’s Soul
– for it’s a fact well known that they have none – and the one on the right should be the
Witch of Jackals
, for it’s her dark magic we must rely on to survive diving to thirty-six thousand feet. Which one of the terrible pair are we to seize?’

‘I’ll take a witch over the office of tax,’ said Charlotte. She approached the craft on the right and touched the crystal under her diving suit. A circular port irised open in the darkship’s hull and a ramp extruded like a lolling tongue. One foot on the ramp and Charlotte was punched backward by a weight wrapping her with a murderous constriction, then she was falling down to the dock. She managed a single surprised croak before a blaze of agony burned across every nerve she possessed. As Charlotte tumbled, she saw Maeva weaving around, her shock-spear blazing erratic bolts of energy towards the craft behind them, loosing bolts even as her body jerked and lurched, spouting blood off her diving suit in a hail of rifle balls; falling, shooting, falling, shooting. Charlotte hit the chamber’s floor as a dead weight, exhaling and gagging, the strangling netting repaying her every movement with sparking pain. Laid out across the hanger, Charlotte’s eyes twisted up, the one thing she could still move without being lashed by the cruel embrace of the capture net. A lock had opened in the craft behind them, spilling sailors with guns – Jackelians by the look of them, the ancient royalist arms of the Kingdom sitting on their Jack Tar hats.

Commodore Black stumbled towards Maeva, clutching a red weal of blood on his shoulder. Shot-drunk and trembling, he landed on his hands and knees by the nomad woman’s side. ‘Don’t move, lass.’

‘I’ve found a way to punish you after all, Jared,’ she grimaced.

‘Save your strength now,’ the commodore pleaded. ‘We’ll patch you up. Just be quiet and let me look at you again.’

‘And how do I look?’ Maeva coughed.

‘Fine, lass. Just like when we first met.’

‘You always were a honeyed-tongued pirate.’

‘Privateer, Maeva. Never a pirate.’

A grey-haired woman emerged from the darkship portal Charlotte had opened, more sailors at her side. Alighting on the dock, the woman smoothly kicked the commodore off all fours and onto his back. ‘There you are brother, lying on your fat arse. That’s the way you like to spend your wars. Before you run away, at least, leaving the rest of us to die.’

‘Mercy,’ coughed the commodore, raising an arm. ‘Parlay.’

‘One privateer to another? I think we’re a little beyond that, don’t you?’ Gemma bent down and reached through the netting binding Charlotte, a blade in her hand. Slicing open Charlotte’s diving suit, the woman reached through and ripped the amulet painfully from Charlotte’s neck. ‘No more stage tricks from you, Mistress Shades. Our mutual friend Mister Walsingham is looking forward to renewing your acquaintance. It seems you owe him a sceptre and he’s not very pleased with all the hoops you’re making him jump through to retrieve it.’

Charlotte tried to speak, but the burning agony was as bad as plunging her fist into a stoked fireplace.

‘The capacitors on the net are very sensitive,’ smiled Gemma Dark. ‘I’d keep your witticisms to yourself, thief girl, until you’re safely locked up in the feeding pens. You did want to visit my allies’ seed-city, no? It’s a long dive down. I’m here to save you the trouble of stealing a darkship. Always happy to give any friend of my brother the scenic journey.’

Maeva groaned on the floor, her fingers reaching weakly for her fallen shock-spear, but Gemma Dark’s foot swept the nomad’s weapon a couple of inches beyond her dying grasp. ‘No, I don’t think
you’re
coming along for the ride. You’d bleed all over my darkship’s cabin, and while our allies do so appreciate human blood, I’d rather not have to mop it up for them.’ Gemma Dark knelt down alongside Maeva. ‘Your filthy nomad vermin outside Lishtiken didn’t last very long, I’m afraid. The city wasn’t as unprepared for your arrival as it appeared. Time for you to join your friends.’ The commodore’s sister produced a pistol and shot Maeva through the heart, her body shuddering on the floor. Charlotte jounced in shock at the cold-blooded slaughter, the commodore’s moan coming out as half a sob.

‘That’s as much mercy as I have for your kind, sea-wanderer. Same as your seanore friends showed any royalist unlucky enough to be captured crossing your hunting grounds.’ She pushed the commodore away from the nomad’s corpse with her boot, clicking her fingers for the mob of sailors to come and secure him with manacles. ‘Don’t worry, you’re not getting off so easily, brother. We’ll have a proper family reunion, you and I, appropriately unhurried. The sea-bishops have a machine that allows them to drain a mind as if it’s a swamp, but where’s the sport in that? I’ll handle your interrogation the way all traitors to the cause should be treated … your fat arse, an iron bar, and your dear little sister for company.’

‘You didn’t have to kill Maeva,’ whispered the commodore. ‘You didn’t have to.’

‘Oh, I think we should start as we mean to go on, don’t you?’

Charlotte lay on the deck, the sailors deactivating the shock net only to manacle her arms and bundle her up inside the darkship. At least she was free of the vicious shocks pursuing her every roll and twitch. ‘You can’t trust the sea-bishops! Those monsters don’t have allies, they have herds. You’re not their partners. To them, you’re only their supper – delayed.’